The line that builds a healthy society

We are now in the “deep end” of summertime, treading comfortably in the gentle ripples of warmer weather and lazier days, of less obligation and more relaxation – or at least most of us.

If they have not already done so, teachers, staff and administrators of many schools are about to return to the essential task of planning for the imminent reconvening of school.

To a group of Diaspora Jewish educators who met recently in Jerusalem, Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin succinctly conveyed the importance of Jewish education: “There will be no Jewish people without good and strong Jewish education. Education is the precondition of a healthy society that learns from the past, applies those lessons to the present, and draws conclusions for the future.”

To the generation of Jewish students who spent their university years in the late 70’s and early 80’s, the Boston-based, Jewish folk/rock music group, Safam, also succinctly conveyed the importance of Jewish education. In addition, they poignantly remind us that one generation always plants, builds and nurtures the foundation for the next.

Of course that generational task has constructed the line of Jewish life that has built the healthy society of which President Rivlin spoke.

Talmud Torah, by Safam

See the children, smiling faces
As the day’s begun
They’re our future, teach them brightly
Blessed every one